


Branching Out

by KN1GHT



Category: Titanfall
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Friendship, Legion Class Titain, Light-Hearted, Major character death - Freeform, Not Beta Read, Other, Robot/Human Relationships, War, not chronological
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2018-11-15 02:16:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11221185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KN1GHT/pseuds/KN1GHT
Summary: Oakley Orion, a pilot with a disappointing end.HN-4220, a Legion with a heroic end.This is a study on how those two met, their struggles, their thoughts, and how an AI became slightly more human.





	1. Chapter 1

Oakley Orion, Pilot in training. She's been assigned to a Titan, finally. After a grueling two years of training and a year of waiting for the perfect fit, a Titan that would truly compliment her particular style, here she stands. 

"There you are. Your Titan. Legion class HN-4220, practically a walking, talking ballistic tank. Go say hi, embark, get used to each other, " Her commander says, offhandedly waving in the titans direction while turning to leave. "I have to go deal with the other new Pilots. I'm sure you're well-versed enough by now to not need me to hold your hand, aye?"

Oakley absently nods, slowly walking closer, ignoring the way her commander shakes his head in a chuckle and meanders away. She's run multiple VRs with all the types of Titans, trying to make sure her skills aren't lacking when she comes up to the real thing. There are things the VR didn't include, though. Like how HN-4220's vents hiss as he looks down at her, shifting his weight on his pedes in anticipation. 

"Pilot Orion. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance," HN-4220 says, the Titans - HER Titan - sounding welcoming enough. His voice is distinctly masculine, low and rumbling and easy to listen to. He kneels down, meeting her face to optic. She thumbs at her helmet that hangs off her hip idly, itching to put it on, to get it over with, to get going with the last stretch of her training. 

"Its nice to meet you too, HN-4220. Please, call me Oakley. What would you like me to call you?" Oakley asks, remembering how some Titans had names - from previous programmers, pilots, or mechanics. Speaking of, "Am I your first pilot?"

"Yes, Pilot... Oakley. I am only named HN-4220, but if you wish to rename me, I am open to it," HN-4220 says. Oakley takes another look, putting a hand to her face in thought. HN-4220 had a gorgeous dark green and white paintjob, with little flecks of red peppered in here and there. It reminded her of her old farming home, long ago destroyed by the IMC. They had a giant orchard of Earth's apple trees, with fluffed and giant hawthorne trees next to their house. She would always climb out of her window onto the hawthorne next to it, and sit on it's high up branches to gaze out along the trees. 

As she sits in front of HN-4220, Oakley wonders if she could sit in the seat and look out upon an orchard again. Just once, is all she wanted. She smiles up at his optic, happy with the memory. HN-4220 makes a soft whirring noise, and his optic focuses in on her face. Oakley quietly makes it a mission of hers, to experience it again.

"How about Hawthorne?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been playing Titanfall 2 a lot lately. I've always liked robots and artificial intelligences, and its nice to finally have something that makes it come face-to-face with the harsher aspects of human beings - war, death, and loss. Especially with a human outlet. I haven't written anything in a long, long time. Hopefully this is still enjoyable with my lack of recent experience.
> 
> Sometimes this story will focus on one more than the other. It is not always going to be in a timeline order.
> 
> Something short to motivate myself. I may or may not work on this frequently. I have an abundance of free time, but not an abundance of motivation.


	2. Chapter 2

It was a 7 week assignment, and then they’d be switched out for a different team. This planet, they were too late to fully save, but the IMC forces that ravaged it have gone. Oakley, Hawthorne, another Ion Titan, and their team of riflemen and medics were sent to survey the damage, save civilian survivors that could be hanging around the wreckages of their towns, and squash out any IMC troops left behind. 

This planet seemed to be one of the more well-off planets, with houses sporting some pricey goods here and there, more of a focus on industry than agriculture. It makes for an interesting excursion, at least. Oakley sees things she never would have, back at home.

Oakley decided to go out on foot, checking buildings still standing. Her X-55 Devotion rests comfortingly on her back, SA-3 Mozambique strapped to her thigh. She doesn’t need to be holding a weapon now, going through wrecked houses and checking bodies, looking for any signs that someone decided to escape somewhere. Some buildings have no exits except for high-up windows, and she thanks her jump kit for allowing her to get into those wrecks - she’s already found a scared survivor in one.

Its one of these buildings that brings a bit of her childhood back, of course.

Oakley climbs through a window, somewhat clumsily scrabbling up the side. Hawthorne, checking a house a block away, catches it and chuckles at her.

“An expert pilot at work.”

Oakley, after plopping inside, waves a hand dismissively out the window. “Yeah yeah, don’t be so cheeky.” It sounds scolding, but she can’t hide the warmth in her voice, even over the private coms.

She hears Hawthorne indignantly vent some hot air in the distance, and decides to poke fun at him for it later. For now, she’s busy checking the rooms.

This house seems a little more intact than the others, past the doors at the bottom floor being collapsed or otherwise covered. She makes her careful way through every room, softly calling out and slowly opening doors to rooms, closets, not wanting to spook anybody who might be inside. At one point, a mouse scurries away, and she huffs at it - she can’t exactly rescue that.

Oakley slowly makes her way up to the top floor of the three-story home, not being quiet but not wanting to find out whether or not the house is more damaged than she thinks and falling through the floor. She takes the first door she sees, and is greeted by the sight of a large room with a closed wooden window. 

What really takes her breath away is what sits stately in the middle of the room, facing the door.

A grand piano.

“Oh!”, she breathes, slowly walking up to it. She hasn’t seen one of these in many years. The last one she remembers sitting in front of was in her grandparent’s house, taking small lessons from her grandfather in between jovial visits with the rest of the family. It reminds her of growing up, visiting her grandparents after they had to sell it and buying them an electric piano.

It never quite compared, but it filled the gap. She took lessons and learned as much as she could. She wishes they could have this one, that they were still around to appreciate it.

“Pilot Oakley?” Hawthorne inquires, “Have you found someone?”

“Um? Oh, no. No, I found a piano. Come here, you might be able to see. I haven’t seen one of these in years,” Oakley says, trailing a finger along the old mahogany. It has a very thin layer of dust, suggesting it was used as recently as before the attack. 

Oakley goes to the window and swings the wooden doors opened, catching the eye of Hawthorne, who was approaching from their now-abandoned house. She waves quickly to him, and disappears inside before he can wave back - not that he would, he wasn’t a silly human.

… He would, since he was a silly Titan instead.

“Why would I want to stare at a piano?” Hawthorne asks as he finally settles in front of the window, watching Oakley mime delicately flicking back the tails of a pianist’s tailcoat before she sits. She beams at him from under her helmet.

“Oh, you’ll listen too. I promise it is worth it, but you don’t have to stay the whole time. Just listen to a few measures, okay?” Oakley says, already focusing on the keys. She pokes at a few, willing muscle memory back to her. Hawthorne settles in silently, waiting.

Oakley takes a breath as Opus 14 comes back to her, Dustin O’Halloran’s notes from long ago coming through her hands as easy as breathing. She smiles delicately at the keys, loving the way the old piano voices the notes. She can feel Hawthorne’s interest through the link, hear his optics focusing in. 

She turns on her coms to the team for others to hear, wanting to share this happiness. “I found a piano, guys!” Oakley says, winding into the more complicated yet gentle high notes. 

Amidst the questions and her telling tales of her childhood with pianos, moving onto Opus 28, she looks at Hawthorne’s unbroken interest, obvious with the way his optic doesn’t stray to look out the building.

She decides that she’ll get an electric piano when she can, keep it by the seat. Play for Hawthorne when they have a long walk ahead of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still getting a feel for the characters.


	3. Chapter 3

Its a long, boring walk of piano playing.

They’ve been assigned to check up on a Militia-protected city, help hunt some large aggressive fauna in the area around it. However, a storm whipped up above the mountain-surrounded city, too dense to see through with sensors and too violent to risk entering with a ship for a touchdown. Instead, Hawthorn and Oakley have been dropped down a few hundred miles out, where the storm was gentle enough to do so.

Oakley had already asked if they could wait out the storm and then land in the city then, but apparently when spring rolls around the corner for this planet, the storms stick around much longer - sometimes lasting for two weeks. They had a deadline for this visit, having to leave after the week was over to visit other planets in the Frontier needing Titan-level help, in the absence of them having their own Titans.

So, here they both are: Hawthorne trudging through a somewhat small forest path in the storm, Oakley playing inside and holding conversation. 

“This is called ‘Sarabande’, by an ancient french composer called Claude Debussy. I’ve seen pictures of him. Funny looking man. He was born about, uh, maybe 7 centuries ago, if I remember correctly?” Oakley muses, playing the electric piano in her lap. 

After a short pause, Hawthorne grappling his way over a short rocky cliff in their path while Oakley firmly grasps the piano to prevent it from clattering away from her, he says matter-of-factly, “Precisely 810 years ago, in 1862.” He stands up on top, and keeps walking smoothly towards their destination, still quite far. From where she sits, the gentle rocking of his gait is soothing. She continues the measure she left off on.

“I wonder what it was like back then. Hard to even think of anything that far away, with the Battle of Typhon only happening 45 years ago. I wasn’t even born yet! Its amazing how much we’ve preserved human history.”

“Its amazing how you humans have even preserved yourselves. No offence,” Hawthorne starts, sounding somewhat full of himself, “But your armor is practically tissue paper, compared to me.”

“Yeah, and who starts crying to me whenever something jumps on his back?” Oakley mocks, “Oh yeah, big baby Hawthorne.”

“I am no baby.”

“You might as well be!” the pilot sighs, “But I don’t mind. You’re my baby. I’ll take care of you.”

Hawthorne doesn’t answer, but Oakley feels him go from a frustrated cringe to a hesitantly blooming warmth over the link. She peters out from playing Sarabande, and switches to Menuet sur le nom d'Haydn, composed by Maurice Ravel.

“You know, I used to have really long hair. All the way down my back, to below my knees. I got it all cut off soon after I joined the Militia. You can’t exactly fit all of that under a helmet,” Oakley starts after the moment of silence. She moves to touch her hair in question, but the short-cropped auburn locks are tucked away safely under her helmet. 

“Why did you have it long? It is dangerous to have something like that in combat.” Hawthorne says, and Oakley giggles at him.

“My dad, mostly. He told me to never cut my hair, or else he’d cry. I was little back then, but I really took it to heart. Its hard to see your parents upset like that, so I never did. I used to have to braid it or tie it up in a huge bun just so I could help out without it getting caught in something,” she murmurs, smiling. “I think the girls from the nearby town liked it a lot more than the boys did. I couldn’t really get the boys to talk to me. Its funny, because my mom always told me redheads were heartbreakers. So much for that.”

Oakley grips her piano to herself again as Hawthorne jumps off a small drop, then sets it back down as he continues on, saying, “You have me now. You do not have to worry about procreation, because you have your responsibility with the Militia. Offspring would take up too much of your time.”

Oakley, taken aback, soaks this in and then laughs loudly. “Wow! Thank you, Hawthorne, what a relief.”

Hawthorne puffs up in pride over the link. “Of course, Pilot Oakley.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you tell I really like french composers? If you want to really listen to something great, check out this long piece composed by Ravel: /watch?v=YHrstmOPKBQ . Its on youtube.
> 
> I really makes me wish to write some epic scene that could follow it. I guess I'll just stick to my imagination, though. I'm not too good at this stuff.
> 
> Oh yeah! I guess this tells you enough: Jack is not gonna make a guest appearance. The wikia says he was in his mid to late 30s in Titainfall 2, so he's anywhere from 80 to 84 years old at this point. War is harsh, and unforgiving, no matter how good you may be. I can't say he'd actually live to be old. Their 'real life' doesn't have savestates. Pilots die. However, they can be remembered as heros. Thats how they live on.


End file.
